Josh Lanyon ~ Lone Star
From: Carina Press

Review of: Josh Lanyon ~ Death Of A Pirate King

Josh Lanyon ~ Come Unto These Yellow Sands
From: Samhain Publishing

Josh Lanyon ~ This Rough Magic
From: Loose Id

A Josh Lanyon eBook on Loose Id… Is there anything in all of Gay Romance that simply screams auto-buy at the top of it’s lungs? A great writer on a Top ePub with clean editing and top shelf touches all the way. And I can buy it in PDF so chew on that Carina Press. I wish other ePubs out there would see what makes this so special and try to emulate all the parts of this mix of talent and professionalism. I would have so much less to bitch about.

I should just tell them to automatically charge my card for the next one and email me the PDF.

Josh Lanyon ~ All She Wrote
From: Samhain Publishing

Josh Lanyon ~ Strange Fortune
From: Samhain Publishing

Oops missed this one.

Josh Lanyon ~ A Vintage Affair
From: Loose Id

I have got to say the new iBooks letting me read my eBooks in PDF format so rocks. I am so happy right now to have my structured pages back and page numbers and all that and I can just drag and drop my PDFs into iTunes. I love it!

Josh Lanyon ~ The Darkling Thrush
From: Loose Id

Josh Lanyon ~ The Dark Farewell
From: Samhain Publishing

Wow, I missed this one. Been way too busy lately. Sorry Josh!
Can I admit that the mantitty on this cover is utterly generic and due to that it is in the way of a far more interesting picture that would have raised the class factor up to 10?
Less can be more.

Josh Lanyon ~ The Dark Tide (Adrien English Mysteries 5)
From: Loose Id

I’ll put my suitcase here for now
I’ll turn the TV to the bed
But if no one calls and I don’t speak all day
Do I disappear
Look at me without you
I’m quite proud of myself
I feel reckless clumsy
Like I’m making a mistake
A really big mistake

Do you like being single
Do you want me back
Do you want me back
Do I like being single
Am I coming back
Am I coming back
Do you want me back
Everything But The Girl ~ Single

I sat reading the final installment of the much discussed Adrien English Mysteries listening to the very apropos album of choice for such an endeavor Everything But The Girl ~ Walking Wounded from 1996. Believe me Adrien is very much walking and wounded these days. The music tumbles out at first as you hear only the sparse dancing electronics providing the perky beat and then the smokey vocals take over easing you into the song and then the lyrics come around to rip your heart out and leave you feeling like emotional hamburger. Something closely resembling the sum of Adrien’s romantic life in three parts.

For those of you who are not aware of my exact feelings about Adrien and Jake then make sure before diving into this review to go read up on my close to Power Point level presentation with numerous quotes and pages of information as to exactly why I think they are so very very wrong for each other in my review of their last installment Death Of A Pirate King.

In summary for those not wanting to be spoiled The Dark Tide is yet another Grade A so why are you reading this? Go buy it already you know you were going to anyway.

Adrien English wakes up a few weeks after open heart surgery to find a cat has taken up residence where his brain should be and a dead body has decided to move out of the third floor apartment next door and into the front pages of the LA newspapers. What will mother say? Will Jake come to save the day? Will his whole family continue to drive him to an early death by suicide? Will he ever get around to deciding what he really feels about any of his many Exs and finally will he get around to telling someone to fuck off and die for betraying him?

Now for the spoiler cut…

So as you can tell from my comments I do not have much sympathy for Adrien. I mean he sets himself up to be the ever so isolated mess other people make of his life. I want one of you dear readers out there to name ONE friend (Just one) we have met since Claude in these five books. Anyone? Just one name of some trusted gay friend he confides all his bullshit to, who he bounces things off of, who looks out for his best interests when it comes to strange men and stranger problems that Adrien finds himself involved with. Can you name one?

That my friends is the whole problem I have with Adrien. Adrien has no friends, no interest outside the bookstore, no life of his own. Nothing that makes him a real human being and nothing that protects him from falling for the next loser that comes through that bookstore door. So in this episode of “Wilting Flower, Fucking Liar” we find the cavalcade of Exs showing up out of no where. I myself was ready to start skipping pages I tell you. Oh Mel Davis, you left me suddenly after ten years to fuck one of your students but lets kiss and make up. Oh Guy Snowden, you left me to fuck one of your students too and not only that the asshole tried to KILL ME let’s do lunch. Oh Jake Riordan, you left me to fuck some strange woman you got pregnant and married her but I still want you baby. GAG!

So when I get to parts like this…

“I was happy enough with Guy, but I don’t want Guy. I don’t want…anyone. Right now.” pg 13

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! God, Adrien English You Fucking Dick Whipped Loser! Don’t play games of witty god damned banter! Take. A. Stand! Who the fuck cares how smart you are if what you say means nothing? Tell them what a bunch of low life scum they were to you. Lash out, because even they know they totally deserve it. Tell them to leave you the fuck alone! Make a decision emotionally and stick to it for once in your miserable fucking life.

What are you a living voodoo doll? How many more nails do you have to collect before you own your own god damned cross?

Oh yeah, that’s right “no friends” and only “family” around to take care of him and nothing “outside” to interest Adrien not even a neighborhood gay bar where he might go sob on some poor bartender’s shoulder. So without these losers he’s got nothing left, nothing to show any emotional investment on his part. Jake might have been in the closet but Adrien is in a prison. I must be losing patience in my old age. Anyway, so half the first part of this book was a wash for me. We got no further with Adrien and Jake, since this is their series and all, because Adrien showed some hurt at least in that area but then he went and made an ass of himself with all the other Exs in his life making me grit my teeth. I gave up on Adrien because all he seems to do is reopen even older wounds than Jake. What for? He seems more than capable of finding new losers to abuse him. It might have made things more interesting for those of us who have had to sit through numerous re-tellings of the damage these guys did the first time around.

So does Jake redeem himself at least? Jake I hate to admit has been the more “human” character this whole series despite the fact he treated Adrien like an emotional and literal punching bag. So does he redeem himself at the end?

Ten months. Not that long, really. Making it all the more difficult to explain why it sometimes seemed like one of the most important relationships of my life.
“Were you still seeing Kane all that time?”
Had he been expecting the question? Jake answered without hesitation. “At first, yes. I quit seeing him after we spent those days at the ranch.” His gaze met mine steadily, seriously. There seemed to be a message there. I wasn’t sure what it was.
I said, and I was astonished to hear the pain in my voice, “I’d thought—I don’t know why—that I was sort of your first.” I added quickly, “I mean, I know I wasn’t your first, because you said—”
He said, “You were the first in every way that counted. You were the first guy I ever kissed.” He smiled faintly, unreadably. “Come to think of it, you were the first guy I had sex with in a bed.”
I had no idea what to say to that. The images that it conjured were enough to shut anyone up, I guessed.
“You’re comparing apples and oranges. Paul and I didn’t date. We weren’t friends. We didn’t have a relationship outside of the club we both belonged to. He had a voracious appetite for pain, and I had a powerful desire to inflict it.”
I wished that I hadn’t asked. It was more than I wanted to know.
“However, when I went back to the club after my marriage, my relationship with Paul did change. We became friends. Or if not friends, at least I allowed the relationship to extend outside of the confines of the club. I was fond of him.”
“I know.”
“I’m sorry you were hurt. I’m sorry Paul hurt you. I’m sorry I hurt you.” Straightforward, sincere, take it or leave it. Pg 45

Actually Jake does ok, especially by the end of the book when he is left with nothing, no home, no family, no job, and I felt sorry for him even though he deserved it all. That happens when you build a life of little lies till it evolves into something that can be knocked down like a stack of dominoes. I was fine with him, not so much because anything he said changed my mind about him or his actions but because Adrien did not leave me with many other choices. Now maybe if they get together Jake can see about getting Adrien a backbone transplant to go with the open heart surgery and they will both be better off in the end. Divorced most likely, but better off.

Still every book in this series has been well written and a must read and I obviously found it interesting enough to want to see the big Jake loving finish. I guess I expected Adrien to fill out as a more complete person with more resolve and more assuredness than when we first met him but Jake made up for some of that lack of growth with all his problems even if I still think they are both absolutely uncommunicative high maintenance messes but maybe in that fact alone they both do deserve each other. Grade A

Josh Lanyon ~ The Dark Tide
From: Loose Id